The dangers of hospitals

Mistakes can happen all too easily in hospitals, but there are ways to protect yourself during your stay.

Hospitals can be dangerous places. Data from The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (ACSQHC) shows that in 2009-2010, 35 public hospital patients had surgical equipment left in their bodies, five operations involved the wrong patient or body part and 11 people died as a result of incorrect medication.

This highlights the need for you to know how to best protect yourself if you or a loved one wind up in hospital.

Infections

Golden staph is the most common hospital infection. Infection expert Professor Peter Collignon says thousands of Australians are infected by it each year and one in five die within 30 days of infection.

Once in your bloodstream, it produces toxins that kill your white cells. It can move to your heart valve; your spine, causing paraplegia; your knee joint, leading to arthritis; and myriad other body parts.

How it happens: The two most common ways golden staph is contracted are person to person via hands or touch, or extended use of IVs or urinary catheters, which open up a pathway for the bug to get beneath the skin.

Prevention: Ask any doctor or nurse who examines you to use an alcohol wipe or gel on their hands beforehand. Visitors should do likewise.

"If you are having an open wound examined, ask them to wear sterile gloves as well as cleaning their hands beforehand," Collignon says.

Studies show that catheters are often left in for longer than needed, so talk to hospital staff regularly about your needs. Collignon recommends patients ask the following questions: how much longer do I really need this? When is the soonest you can take this out? Can I use an oral medication instead to get the same result?

"Patients can't answer these questions," he says. "But by asking nurses and doctors, they will be forced to think about it and the catheter is likely to come out earlier."

Medication Mix-ups

This is the most common error in hospitals, partly because medication use is rampant.

"A lot of medication mistakes don't lead to harm so they go unreported, but it's important to understand how and why it happens," says Dr Michael Smith, clinical director of the ACSQHC.

How it happens: People who end up in hospital are commonly older, chronically ill, on multiple medications and have multiple practitioners working with them every day. Nurses and doctors are often overstretched and mistakes are usually made as a result of a series of events. Smith says: "There are usually two or three things lined up in the wrong way for a medication mistake to happen. Typically, the prescription may not be written clearly. The nurse might also be busy and distracted by another patient while dispensing medication so gets it wrong."

Prevention: Be aware that there is capacity for human error at all times, provide as much information as possible, ask lots of questions and communicate with all medical staff.

"Traditionally there has been a culture of the patient just handing over all responsibility to the clinician," Smith says. "But there is a strong role patients can play by providing as much information as possible about all prescribed medicines and keeping an eye on medicines being given to them. Don't be afraid to say, 'Excuse me, what is that red tablet? I don't usually have it.'"

Surgical Errors

Procedures involving the wrong patient or body part are not common, but do occur.

How it happens: Smith explains a typical scenario: "A patient is admitted to hospital late in the day because another patient has been cancelled. The surgery team has been busy dealing with an emergency when the new late case arrives straight into surgery and bypasses the normal pre-surgery check list. All clinicians present agree it's the right knee needing work and the new junior doctor, who knows it's the left knee, assumes he is the one who has made the mistake."

Prevention: Make sure you are taken through a pre-surgery checklist of who you are and what is being done. Talk to the doctors about why you are there.

Smith says: "We assume doctors and nurses know what they are doing, so when we don't understand, we don't ask. Health professionals want people to ask questions. They appreciate it."

Hospital health

Bring a list of medications and supplements you are taking and allergies you have.

If incapacitated, have a friend or family member ask questions for you.

Trust your instincts. If something seems wrong, speak up.

They left a piece of rubber inside me

Almost three decades ago, Jet Xavier had a drug overdose and found himself in hospital on dialysis. Today, he is a successful performance coach with a very different lifestyle and a constant reminder of his darker days inside him. The doctors left a piece of rubber in his stomach after the procedure.

"At the time I was worried about having a foreign object inside of me. I was worried about whether it would cause an infection and started thinking, 'Am I going to die?'

I asked them to take it out but they said it will dissolve one day so they'd leave it in.

"Here I am 27 years later and I can still feel it in my stomach. It's just under my bellybutton, it's about two centimetres long, solid and hard. It's tender to touch sometimes and can result in a bit of an ache, but now it's kind of like my friend."

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Latest Comments ( 2 )

Information like this needs to be available to present and future patience. I know one international company- Viscot Medical- has done a great deal of work trying to make these problems known and fixing them. Thanks body and soul for putting this out there!

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